Author Archives: ghw

Book Production and Distribution, 1625ñ1800

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Reminder for GHW: check out this entry by H. G. Aldis in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-1921) at Bartleby.com. I certainly need to learn more about James Lackington, one of the most successful booksellers of eighteenth-century Britain and an ex-Methodist. Megan Benton first told me about Lackington when I met her at SHARP 2003. He published his Memoirs in 1791, and it looks like they’ve been reprinted in a modern edition. Amazon.com also lets me know that Lackington gets a mention by James Raven on page 180 of The Practice and Representation of Reading in England.

speaking of new media…

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…I wanted to mention, again, “Listening Post,” by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin at the Liszt Visual Arts Center. The work is beautiful, eerie, and captivating; a brief piece appeared in the NY Times when the work was at the Whitney. What the Times does not make clear, however, is that the language processed by the piece is pulled live from the Internet. (See this write-up, too.) The wall plaque explains that “[‘Listening Post’] continuously samples texts from thousands of chat rooms and other online public discussion forums.” So you, dear reader, could be part of this exhibit and not even know it.

I felt this info deserved an entry all its own, having been previously embedded in the middle of a rather long entry.

creativity and print / pixels

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I’ve learned from this announcement that the UMKC Center for Creative Studies is asking for applications by May 1 for curriculum development for interdisciplinary courses studying the creative process. You can read the application instructions for yourself. I’m thinking of proposing a course that would be taught by me and by a faculty member from the Art & Art History Department, but I’m not 100% sure what direction to take. A course that involved printmaking and/or bookmaking would be interesting, but I’m also tempted by the possibility of a course involving new media. There are faculty from A&AH engaged in both, so…

But what would a course “studying the creative process” and involving print or new media look like? This is just a blind post asking for suggestions for further reading and research. I will post this to Palimpsest, as well.

honour among punks

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I recently purchased a copy of the graphic novel Honour Among Punks, by Guy Davis and Gary Reed. The story is set in an alternate reality where 20th-century England basically never left the Victorian age because World War I took place on much lesser scale and World War II never happened. Technology did not advance as rapidly because, to quote the introduction, “there were no great wars to propel the development of new weapons and all the ancillary benefits that come from military research.” In other words, it’s like steampunk in reverse. I’ve just started the book (airplane reading, so I don’t know when I’ll have time to get back into it until the semester ends), and it’s a little rough around the edges in terms of storytelling, but it’s fun.

Guy Davis is one of my favorite artists, and I first became addicted to his work when reading the now dearly departed Sandman Mystery Theatre, back issues of which are available in many comic book stores at bargain prices. You should buy them in the groups of four issues by which each story arc was published. It looks like Honour was Davis’ first published work, and as the five “acts” progress, one can watch his style mature and evolve. Davis creates incredibly detailed panels with lots of cross-hatching, and yet sometimes things are suggested by a few simple lines rather than delineated fully. Davis’ work is in the same vein as work by the much more famous Frank Miller, but I think Davis tends to work on more interesting projects.

will you blog the conference?

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As I was leaving for SHARP 2003 last summer, Kari asked, “Will you blog the conference?” Having just gotten back from CCCC 2004, Jeff writes, “I really canít see how people manage to blog conferences in real time. I canít listen, talk, or type at the same time.” I found that I could get a wifi signal in one of the conference meeting rooms at ASECS 2004, but I did not try to blog live. I worry about getting the details wrong in someone’s paper (or worse, missing the point altogether). I did take some very detailed notes on my legal pad, imagining myself blogging it later, perhaps in bullet-point format like Kathleen at SCMS 2004, and in this way did thoughts of blogging make me pay better attention than I usually do. But when it came time to consider what to post, I decided that I didn’t feel comfortable putting the details of someone else’s argument online. This is not to say that I think it’s wrong in principle to do this, just that I wasn’t confident enough in my own summary of someone else’s argument to do so. If this blog were just for my own use, my attitude would be different, but my latest stats say that I get about 400 visits a day, so…